These calls are often important gauges of where the industry thinks its future lies, whether its in expanded immigration detention contracts, out-of-state transfers from states like California, or increased state contracts. It will also be interesting to see if the loss of CCA contracts to operate the Dawson State Jail and Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Transfer Facility - together more than 4,000 prison beds - will impact the company's annual bottom-line.

According to the Texas Ethics Commission'srecordsfor 2013, several of the aforementioned legislators have continued to lobby for the private prison industry, and several more names have come across our radar as well.

1. Lionel Aguirre

Aguirre received $25,000 from both Correctional Healthcare Companies, a private corrections healthcare company, and Correct Rx Pharmacy Services, which provides institutional pharmacy services. Aguirre also received $50,000 from GEO Group in 2013. Aguirre is registerd as a lobbyist for GEO Care, which claims to provide mental health services. He has served as a lawyer for GEO Group in the past and has and has received fat paychecks from them in recent years.

2. Tied: Lara Laneri Keel and Michael Toomey

Keel and received $50,000 from the Corrections corporation of America (CCA) in 2013. In 2011 and 2012, Keel took $50,000-$100,000 from CCA. Keel is also a member of the Texas Lobby Group and the director of the Texas Conservative Coatlition Research Institute.

4. Michael Toomey

Toomey received $50,000 from CCA in 2012, and is allegedly close to Rick Perry.

McWilliams received $25,000-$49,999.99 from Community Education Centers (CEC), the same company that operates the Polk County Detention Center in Livingston, TX. He held a contract with CEC in 2011 and 2012 for $50,000-$100,000, and is the co-founder of McWilliams Governmental Affairs Consultants. He is also proud of his service on the Legislative Budget Board Task Force on Health Care, as well as on the Lieutenant Governor's Task Force on Prison Overcrowding.

Sepulveda, a consultant based in Austin, received less than $10,000 from the GEO Group in 2013. Goodman, also a consultant in Austin, also received less than $10,000. Goodman has also received money from the Juvenile Justice Association of Texas.

10. Christie L. Goodman

Goodman, also a consultant in Austin, also received less than $10,000 From GEO Group. Goodman has also received money from the Juvenile Justice Association of Texas, whose website is sponsored by Abraxas, a GEO Group company that operates juvenile facilties.

According to 1200 News Radio, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, has found that 79 percent of Texans support alternatives to incarceration for drug offenders.

TPPF President Chuck DeVore stated that current Texas laws encourage incarceration rather than the use of effective alternatives:

If a local judge sends an offender to the state prison system, that offender accrues no cost to your county system, that offender becomes a state cost and state responsibility. But if the judge sends the offenders to rehabilitation, the local county has to pay for that, and that's unpopular among county leaders

The TPPF study also indicates that the rate at which Texas is incarcerating people is proving to be unsustainable as the state's population grows. DeVore claims that alternatives to detention can only be implemented if people know that crime rates are actually decreasing. Seventy five percent of those who responded to the survey think that the crime rate is holding steady or increasing, but FBI statistics indicate otherwise.

According to the study, the expansion of alternatives to incarceration could save Texas $2 billion in prison costs.

These developments, while laudable, bear further scrutiny. According to the Texas Observer, the TPPF has received $15,000 in donations from the GEO Group, a private prison corporation. GEO is also invested in alternatives to detention, primarily electronic monitoring devices that "monitor offenders as they live and work in the community" (GEO).

Bob Libal, executive director of Grassroots Leadership, visited Polk in 2012 and 2013 with other activists. Libal claims that "I've visited a bunch of detention facilities in Texas, and that's by far the worst." Libal's sentiments are reflected in a report released by the Detention Watch Network, a coalition comprised of the ACLU, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Grassroots Leadership, and others. The report alleges that those incarcerated at Polk receive inadequate medical care, poor nutrition, are neglected, and do not have access to legal services. An ICE spokesperson claims that these allegations, as well as similar ones reported during Grassroots Leadership's and Texans United for Families' visit to Polk in 2013, are based on "unsubstantiated allegations."

Christie support of CEC harkens back to 2000 and 2001, when Christie was a registered lobbyist for the company. The state of New Jersey has also contributed financially to CEC. Former CEC employees told the New York Times "that the company had kept staffing levels very low" and "did a poor job delivering counseling and other services intended to help inmates make the transition to society." Christie vetoed improvements in New Jersey halfway houses operated by CEC, and is a close friend of Bill Patalucci, a CEC executive. Patalucci later served as chairman of Christie's 2013 re-election committee and he and Christie's brother co-chaired Christie's inaugural committee.

Libal points out that CEC continues to use Christie's support for the company as a public relations tool. Governor Christie spoke at the ten-year anniversary of the Dleaney Hall New Jersey Halfway House two years prior to the facility became the subject of a New York Times investigation. Christie had this to say about the facility:

"Places like this are to be celebrated. A spotlight should be put on them as representing the very best of the human spirit. Because when you walk through here as I've done many times, what you see with your very eyes are miracles happening."

The Editorial Board at the New York Times denounced The House passing a trillion-dollar budget allocating $16 billion of those funds to immigration enforcement.

According to the opinion piece, House Republicans tout this sum as one that "will allow for the highest operational force levels in history" for Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The bill also calls for 2,000 additional CBP officers at border ports and requires that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) fill no fewer than 34,000 detention beds per day until September 30, 2014.

Take the irrational obligation to fill all those detention beds, at the cost of about $122 per day. Why make the people who run a vast and expensive law-enforcement apparatus responsible for keeping prison beds warm rather than communities safe--especially when there are low-cost alternatives to detention that don't involve fattening the bottom lines of for-profit prison corporations?

The authors further denounce the Obama administration, which they claim has used its enforcement powers to deport roughly 400,000 people annually. Immigrants mandatorily detained in for-profit prisons continue to suffer at great cost to taxpayers.

According to CNHI News Service, a Parker Country grand jury has pressed charges against two former corrections officers, 11 former inmates and five other individuals for possible involvement in bribery and the intent to provide contraband to an incarcerated person in February 2013.

Carl James Guittard, 36 and Terrie Elaine Glover, 49, who are both former employees of the Mineral Wells facility, are charged with bribery and intending to provide an incarcerated individual with tobacco. The charges allege that 10 people offered or gave money to both Guittard and Glover with a prepaid debit card. Information regarding the charges reached investigators at the beginning of the year.

Mark Mullin, a special prosecutor, said it is uncommon for state prosecutors to seek this type of case with the number of defendants involved.

"This is a lot of folks," Mullin said. "You know we've seen it before but we don't deal with it very often and not this many of them." Mullin also stated that, though there have been a lot of contraband cases, none involve as many people as the one in question.

The Democrat was unable to reach the corporate spokeswoman for the Corrections Corporation of America, which operated the Mineral Wells Facility.

The facility has a troubled history with contraband issues, which is reportedly a reason for the facility's closure in 2013. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice elected to close Mineral Wells for safety reasons, as well as the problems with contraband and capacity. CCA's contract with TDCJ was thus terminated.

Despite the facility's permanent closure on July 30, 2013, Parker County grand juries have continued to press charges in the last few months regarding contraband violations that have occurred over the last few years.